If you don't own Links LS 1997 Edition, the decision to buy Links LS 1998 Edition is a no-brainer: This is the finest golf simulation on the market, and should be considered the cornerstone of any golf fan's software library. But what if you're one of the tens of thousands of PC duffers who do own Links LS 1997 Edition? Buy it anyway. The 1998 Edition has enough new features to easily justify spending the thirty or thirty-five dollars.
There will doubtless be 1997 Edition owners who will complain that at least some of the 1998 Edition's enhancements should have been offered as a patch, but when you look at the breadth and depth of the changes that argument loses its validity. This is a major upgrade to the best golf engine on the market - adding features that give the game more replay value than it has ever had before.
Probably the biggest of the game's many enhancements is Access' decision to make the 1998 Edition a native Windows 95 (or NT) application. Gone is the 1997 Edition's annoying video test, along with nearly all compatibility problems involving video and sound cards. DirectPlay drivers mean that you can host a game on the Internet (with up to seven opponents) without having to use Kali. To help players find each other, Access will host a matching service on GolfWeb's Links LS web site. And the 1998 Edition will be supported on both Mplayer's Free Zone and Mplayer Plus: the Free Zone. The first will be for casual games, while the Mplayer Plus area will feature tournaments, prizes, and rankings.
Remember the long redraw times of the 1997 Edition on lower-end machines? That too is a thing of the past, thanks to what Access calls "look ahead rendering," which calculates your ball's final resting position and begins to load the correct scenery into memory as the ball is in flight. I'd estimate screen redraws are four or five times faster, and if you knock down a few details, the improvement is even more noticeable. New graphic flourishes include airborne objects such as balloons, jets, and blimps; incredibly realistic water reflections and clouds; new textures and colors; and waving flags on the green (which you can actually see from the tee on some shorter par-3 holes).
One of the 1997 Edition's few flaws is its lack of a tournament mode. That shortcoming is obviously addressed to some degree by the online tourneys mentioned above, but that's not the only way the 1998 Edition lets you compete in a tournament: An off-line tourney mode allows you to design your own tours and compete in a field of 64 players. While playing against the fictional players found here is obviously not as titillating as going up against the pros in EA's PGA Tour Golf Pro, a name edit feature lets you at least assign your favorite players' names to the computer players. And the off-line tourneys are a great way to practice for the pressure of the online events.
What else do you get for your money? Plenty - there are two new golfer animations (one male, one female), four new camera angles (you can have all eight camera views open at one time), two new play modes (scramble and alternate shot), the ability to see your playing partners onscreen, and a feature that lets you print your score on a digitized version of each course's actual scorecard.
Links LS 1998 Edition ships with four courses - three at Kapalua (Plantation, Village, Bay) and, of course, Latrobe Country Club - and includes a conversion feature for 17 Links SVGA courses. There are also multimedia tours of Kapalua Resort and Latrobe, "virtual reality" tours of the Plantation Clubhouse and Arnold Palmer's office and workshop, and video flybys for all four courses. These little extras are fine, but an extra course or two would be far more welcome.
Apart from a single crash during play (which occurred when a when I tried to close a camera view, but as soon as it happened the program detected the problem and saved my position: in less than ten seconds I was back where I had been and ready to resume play), the limited number of courses is the only flaw of the 1998 Edition.
If simplified and free Internet play, off-line tourneys, significantly faster gameplay, new camera angles, new golfer animations, a $15 rebate, and a host of other enhancements don't convince you should upgrade from the 1997 to the 1998 Edition, then nothing will. This is a first-rate product: a sports sim upgrade that's truly worth the asking price.
